World English Bible · Under Assyria
Isaiah 34
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Come near, you nations, to hear! Listen, you peoples. Let the earth and all it contains hear, the world, and everything that comes from it. For is enraged against all the nations, and angry with all their armies. He has them. He has given them over for slaughter. Their slain will also be cast out, and the stench of their bodies will come up. The mountains will melt in their . All of the will be dissolved. will be rolled up like a , and all its armies will fade away, as a leaf fades from off a or a fig tree. For my has drunk its fill in . Behold, it will come down on , and on the people of my , for . is filled with . It is covered with fat, with of lambs and goats, with the kidneys of rams; for has a in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of . The wild oxen will come down with them, and the young bulls with the mighty bulls; and their land will be drunken with , and their made greasy with fat. For has a day of , a year of for the cause of . Its streams will be turned into pitch, its into sulfur, and its land will become burning pitch. It won't be quenched night or day. Its smoke will go up . From generation to generation, it will lie waste. No one will pass through it and ever. But the pelican and the porcupine will possess it. The owl and the raven will in it. He will stretch the line of confusion over it, and the of emptiness. They shall call its nobles to , but none shall be there; and all its princes shall be nothing. will come up in its palaces, nettles and in its fortresses; and it will be a habitation of jackals, a court for ostriches. The wild animals of will meet with the wolves, and the wild goat will cry to his fellow. Yes, the night creature shall settle there, and shall find herself a place of rest. The arrow snake will make her nest there, and lay, hatch, and gather under her shade. Yes, the kites will be gathered there, every one with her mate. Search in the book of , and read: not one of these will be missing. None will lack her mate. For my has commanded, and his has gathered them. He has cast the lot for them, and his hand has divided it to them with a . They shall possess it . From generation to generation they will in it.
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The world at this moment · Under Assyria, 745 BC to 612 BC ›
Assyria at full stretch, deporting whole populations as policy. The northern kingdom is destroyed in 722 BC and Judah survives as a tribute-paying vassal.
- Assyria
- The first empire to run mass deportation as ordinary administration: move the leadership somewhere else, settle strangers in their place, and the province stops being a nation. It worked. Samaria fell in 722 BC and the northern tribes did not come back. Assyria also advertised its cruelty deliberately, carving flayings and impalements on palace walls where envoys would see them, because terror is cheaper than garrisons.
- Judah
- Survives by paying. Hezekiah rebels, Sennacherib takes forty-six Judean towns and besieges Jerusalem in 701 BC, and the city holds. The Assyrian account boasts of shutting Hezekiah up like a bird in a cage and pointedly does not claim to have taken the city, which is one of the more interesting silences in ancient records.
- Egypt
- The splintered reed of a staff that Assyria's field commander mocks Judah for leaning on. It promises help and cannot deliver, and Isaiah spends decades saying so. Assyria eventually invades and sacks Thebes.
- Further afield
- Greece is in its archaic period, founding colonies from Spain to the Black Sea. Rome is under kings. Assyria's own libraries are collecting the literature of Mesopotamia, which is how Gilgamesh survived to be read again in the nineteenth century.
All of Isaiah